Don’t Believe A Word I Say with Bob Segarini

The Rock Files for September 23^rd 2009

Don’t Believe A Word I Say reaches column number 100 – Whoa…

One hundred columns, or blogs, or whatever you want to call them, here at FYI.

Who knew?

Here’s a few interesting factoids:

Don’t Believe A Word I Say (DWAWIS) was originally called ‘Rock the Boat’.

DWAWIS  started out as a Mon through Fri column. After one week, that amount of work proved to be impossible unless I stopped eating, sleeping and leaving the house to do anything else, so the three-times a week template was deemed do-able, and so it is.

DBAWIS receives mail from industry types and regular folks alike. Emails come from all over including Australia, England, California, Florida, Nevada, Illinois, New York, Michigan, Tennessee, and other States, as well as the whole of Canada.

DBAWIS has allowed me to reconnect with, and share the stories of friends I haven’t seen since grade school, legendary industry types I had lost contact with over the years, people I have admired for years but had never had the opportunity to meet, or get acquainted with, and strangers, all of whom bring interesting comments and anecdotes to the table every time they send an email.

DBAWIS has generated approximately 250,000 words since its debut.

Average time spent on a column: Between 6 and 10 hours, sometimes more, never less.

DBAWIS archives can be accessed by typing “Don’t believe a word I say” into the search window on the opening page of www.fyimusic.ca All 100 columns are there to read if you so choose.

DBAWIS has given me the opportunity to entertain, spew, inform, and express myself, and I don’t even have to put on pants or comb my hair.

Thanks to David Farrell, Greg Simpson, Gary Slaight, and the folks at Yangaroo for encouraging me to do this, and to Jade Dunlop, and Minnow and Bagel, who keep me amused, distract me when needed, and make me happy when I’m feeling blue. And to you, my Dear Readers, thanks for being here. You are the reason this has become a labour of love, and not a chore. If I get yet another career because of this column, I can honestly say it will be because of all of you. Bless you, each and every one.

Here’s to the next 1000…

The Rock Files: The Segarini Band-Phase Three Part 1

Okay, we’re a band! What? We’re not?

So now we have an EP out and The Segarini Band is at last, a living breathing thing.

Until David Bendeth informs me that he has other obligations.

Until Gabor rightfully decides to pursue his solo career and begins writing and recording some of the best music to come out of Toronto before or since.

Until Keir Brownstone leaves as well, and eventually surfaces as the bass player in Lorraine Segato’s wonderful Parachute Club.

So now, armed with a new release on a Major Label and ready to start playing live to support it, The Segarini Band is a singing rhythm guitar player and a drummer. We could work strip clubs, or, with the addition of a monkey, a carnival midway.

Now what?

If not for the loyalty of drummer Mark Bronson, I don’t think I would have pursued this idea any further. Mark was all youthful optimism and energy, and he had a point: “We got a fucking record man, let’s DO IT!”

I can’t argue with that.

I turned my attention to Montreal. My next trip home, I found myself in the West Island rock club The Edgewater, a damp, smokey basement that had been home to both The Wackers and The Dudes in the past, and was the club that featured nothing but good local bands downstairs, while high end bands from Jamaica and the other Islands plied the beautiful upstairs showroom. It was at The Edgewater that I had first heard Brian Greenway and invited him to join the Dudes, and it was also to be the place where I would first hear the singer/guitarist that replaced Brian on the West Island as a local hero. His name is Michael St. Denis.

Mikey, Phil, Coffee, hash, and beans in the basement…

I forget the name of the band he was in, but they were dazzling the West Island with dead-on covers of un-coverable songs. The focus in the band wasn’t the cute blonde guy, (Brad?), that seemed to think he was, but the unassuming guitar player that played his axe upside down and left handed. He was a killer player. Not only that, he had a high, clear, voice and could easily handle background harmonies as well as lead. The first time I saw the band they did a version of Bohemian Rhapsody including the hard to do accapella part that even Queen couldn’t duplicate live.

Very impressive.

I asked him to join The Segarini Band, and he asked if he could bring his favourite bass player and best friend into the fold. He could…and soon afterwards, I had a guitar player and bassist living in my basement in Toronto.

How did I get a basement in Toronto?

After the EP came out, A&M said to go ahead and finish an album, so I began work on what eventually became Gotta Have Pop. While working on the record, my wife and our newly hatched daughter came down to Toronto and, with my Mom in tow, we rented a suite at the Town and Country Inn across the street from the legendary late night eatery Louie’s, and with me in the studio and mom babysitting the baby, Cheryl went house hunting.

One afternoon in the studio I got a phone call from Chuck, (Cheryl’s nickname), informing me that she had found a great little house that was affordable, only a block away from the Bloor Street Subway line, and she loved it. I said, “Fine…sounds good to me.”

When I hung up, the engineer asked me where the house was, and I told him what she had told me, “Edabuhcoke.” He stared at me, a completely blank look on his face, then, he started laughing so hard, I thought he’d break a blood vessel.

“Okay, what’s so funny?”, I asked, wondering if Chuck had found us a house next to a tire fire or an airport runway.

He just kept laughing. I waited.

Finally, through the tears and catching his breath, he stammered, “It’s…not…Eda…buh…coke…it’s eh…toe…bah…coe”.

Then he picked up a pen and wrote it down.

Etobicoke

Looks like eda…buh…coke to me.

We moved in shortly thereafter, and a couple of months later, Mikey and Phil took up residence in the basement until they could afford to get a place of their own. Cheryl and I hardly ever saw them We would work on the album, but when they were in the house, they rarely left the basement. I could hear them playing down there, getting the parts and jamming on favourite rock tunes, and even though we invited them up for dinner almost every night, they seldom joined us.

One afternoon I asked Phil, (Angers, pronounced “Ahn-shay”, how they were getting by, and he told me he cooked canned beans or stew on a 150 watt lightbulb in a lamp with a jury-rigged coat hanger stand over it, and Mikey usually just made coffee, subsisting mainly on Players cigarettes, and fine Montreal hash, which he somehow had in abundance.

Rock and Roll.

One night we were all sitting on the couch watching Deliverance on TV and discussing the band and what, or who else, we needed to complete the lineup and get a fuller sound. By the time the end of the movie rolled around, we were sitting there in a cloud of hash smoke, surrounded by a couple of overflowing ashtrays, and Mikey was working on his 10^th cup of coffee. The creepy scene at the end of the film where Burt Reynolds’ arm comes up out of the water had just gone by and I looked over at Mikey and saw that he was convulsing, eyes rolled back in his head, and turning as white as a hotel sheet. At first Phil and I thought he was making fun of the movie’s scary little epilogue, but then we both realized something was horribly wrong.

Were we calm? Phil was…but I went all Foghorn Leghorn.

After yelling his name a few times and getting no response, I started punching him in the chest, like on TV…nothing. I remembered there was a phone in the kitchen and as I leapt up to use it, instructed Phil to keep hitting him.

How rattled was I? I dialed ‘0’, and in a voice at least two octaves higher than usual, shouted at the operator, “What’s the number for 9-1-1!?”

Politically correct or not, there are times when I am retarded.

If Mikey lives, I thought, I’m going to kill him.

Continued next Wednesday in The Rock Files…

That’s enough for now. Email me at segarini@fyimusic.ca with your comments, complaints, and thoughts…and remember…don’t believe a word I say.

Bob “The Iceman” Segarini was in the bands The Family Tree, Roxy, The Wackers, The Dudes, and The Segarini Band and nominated for a Juno for production in 1978. He also hosted “Late Great Movies” on CITY TV, was a producer of Much Music, and an on-air personality on CHUM FM, Q107, SIRIUS Sat/Rad’s Iceberg 95, (now 85), and now provides content for radiothatdoesntsuck.com with RadioZombie, The Iceage, and PsychShack. Along with the love of his life, Jade (Pie) Dunlop, (who hosts and writes “I’ve Heard That Song Before” on RTDS), continues to write, make music, and record.